Your Right to Know

By David M. Herszenhorn and Steven Lee MyersThe New York Times • Thursday May 16, 2013 7:20 AM

MOSCOW — Senior Russian and U.S. officials said yesterday that they are prepared to put a
bizarre spy case behind them, even as the episode remained a matter of fascination to the Russian
news media and public.

In Moscow, U.S. Ambassador Michael A. McFaul was summoned to a meeting at the Russian Foreign
Ministry, where he was told again about Russia’s outrage over what Russian officials depicted as a
failed effort by a CIA officer to recruit a Russian security official as a spy.

The man Russia said was a CIA officer, identified as Ryan Fogle, was officially posted at the
U.S. Embassy as a political officer. Fogle was arrested on Monday night and released to the embassy
on Tuesday with orders that he leave the country as soon as possible.

Yesterday, Russia’s First Channel broadcast at least two news segments about the case, include
one featuring a cloak-and-dagger interview with an officer from the Russian Federal Security
Service, the FSB, and excerpts from what it said was a recorded telephone conversation between
Fogle and the Russian agent he was trying to recruit.

The channel also broadcast an interview with the FSB agent, shown in silhouette with his voice
disguised, who said that the recruit sought by the CIA “was a combat officer who has more than once
taken part in the counterterrorist operations in the North Caucasus and has a very serious combat
training himself.”

The FSB agent told First Channel that Fogle had been under surveillance since his arrival in
Moscow in 2011.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, appeared together
yesterday at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Kiruna, Sweden, and seemed intent not to let the
spy incident disrupt efforts to organize a settlement to the conflict in Syria.